A podcast all about Japanese cartoons and comics as discussed by three self-proclaimed experts in the world of anime and manga! Plus anime news / reviews, coverage of classic anime, hentai / yaoi, and much, much more. Updated every week. We hope.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

As we kick off 2010 we've decided to try experimenting with releasing episodes in both per-segment as well as contiguous versions. Last time we posted the segments just on the website and the full show on the RSS feed. This time we're doing the opposite: posting the segments to the RSS feed and the full show contained in one file just on the website. The remaining parts will be posted to the RSS feed once a week over the next month, but since you've come to the website, we'll give you the option of downloading the entire show right now. Daryl reviews the anime adaptation of Violence Jack by Go Nagai, Gerald reviews Bobby's Girl, and Clarissa reviews the book The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga by Helen McCarthy.

No Pickle Player this time. The Wordpress migration is imminent and it'll have its own built-in Flash player. For now, the ever-changing test layout is over here. Show notes later. It's 2:00 AM.

Introduction (0:00 - 31:20)
None of us really felt like leveling out the audio or editing out the various "y'knows," "um's" and the like because there are far too many good videogames we have bought but not yet played. We elaborate on the nature of seinen manga/anime and give some examples of titles we like. We also hear of yet another person tricked into watching Odin: Photon Space Sailer Starlight as a result of this review we did. Finally, someone asks about the Daicon animations (now on Youtube: watch high-quality copies here and here!)as well as female anime directors.

Let's News! (31:20 - 1:08:05)
Daisuke Gori is dead. Nobody buys sports anime in America. The Allure of Japan's Pop Culture is straight-up good ol' fashioned government propaganda that continues to push the "Cool Japan" BS narrative only espoused in the US by people with books to sell. The people who spend the most time pushing the "weird Japan" narrative (that rename their articles after the fact) should probably not decry the mentality that directly results from their very own actions first and foremost. We check out actual Japanese manga circulation numbers. And Tim Eldred informs us that Space Battleship Yamato: Rebirth is not the worst thing ever made, thus surpassing ALL expectations.

Review: Violence Jack (1:08:05 - 2:02:04)
It took several years to get to the second in the trinity of the Holy Manga Video Trinity of Suck (the first being Angel Cop and the third being Mad Bull 34 by Kazuo Koike). But that's because Violence Jack is the least clip-worthy of the three, cut or uncut. After roughly two years of putting it off, Daryl finally reviews this behemoth, the shonen work that established modern-era post-apocalyptic fiction as we know it.

Promo: Anime82 (2:02:04 - 2:02:58)
The preceding review was made possible by Regan Strongblood, who provided us with copies of uncut Violence Jack long before such a thing was available. Of course, since we put it off for two years, you can now simply download torrents of uncut Violence Jack. He asks that you all grow some mecha balls, and by that he means ones like Devastator's in Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen aka "the 4th most important movie of 2009."

Review: Bobby's Girl (2:02:58 - 2:31:50)
On the subject of things that a few years ago were impossible to find but can now be easily acquired via BitTorrent, Gerald reviews this 1980s classic. Fairly light on dialogue and somewhat experimental in its overall approach, it encapsulates a great number of different animation styles within its fairly short running time.

Review: The Art of Osamu Tezuka (2:31:50 - 3:07:00)
Clarissa wraps things up by reviewing the hardcover edition (with DVD) of this new coffee table style book by Helen McCarthy. Filled with a variety of never-before-seen pictures from the life and times of Japan's "God of Manga," this book is totally worth buying via this Amazon.com link so that we can make like forty cents commission. Remember: it'll stop a bullet! Disclaimer: the AWO makes no guarantees as to the the size or caliber of the bullet that this book can stop.

Closing (3:07:00 - 3:14:59)
Following the shocking revelation that this podcast does NOT cure insomnia (also of note: Peacock King is FREAKING INSANE), we would like to note that both Daryl and Clarissa will indeed be doing panels at Anime Boston 2010. In the next episode, we're turning the difficulty on this all the way up to Bitter as Gerald reviews the movie that put Gainax on the map aka Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise, Clarissa reviews 5cm Per Second by Makoto Shinkai, and Daryl reviews Swallowing the Earth by Osamu Tezuka. In the meantime, we will probably post up a bonus episode with our 2000-2009 anime in review retrospective.

If you look at that Katayama article, the original title (left in the URL) is "Why Weird Japan SELLS." I assume this was edited because it came too close to the truth. But yeah, I was laughing my ass off the entire piece. No idea how you could write that article with a straight face.

Thanks for the name-check! The wiring in my head that allows me to love the new Yamato movie is the same wiring that allows me to completely ignore the "freakshow" aspect of Japanese pop culture that seems to preoccupy and fascinate so many others. It's not that hard. All you need is optimism.

I'm torn... I do want it all at once, but it's also sad to have no AWO for a whole month at a time... Too bad I can't have a 3+ hour show every week. Then again, maybe I'd enjoy the show less if I had 12 hours a month of it?

Mr.Surat there is in fact an English dub version of the uncut Violence Jack ova's that was also released on vhs by critical mass. I would be glad to send you a copy. I have about 200 copies of each ova unopened, both the English dub and subtitled version.If you also want I could send you a brand new unopened vhs set for your collection. Let me know and thanks for the brilliant episode.

Well, at least it was honest of Go Nagai to choose an appropriate name for what he was going to unleash upon the world as part of some sort of exercise in temporary insanity. Makes me wonder if the same applies to Violence Gekiga David no Hoshi -not made by Nagai btw- but having both "Violence" and "Gekiga" in your product's title seems pretty redundant to me anyway. Then again...I digress.

In happier news, Bobby's Girl should be interesting to check out. It may not change the world nor will this ever gather a huge fanbase around it but I do believe that sometimes such things aren't really necessary.

As for the last segment, I've been slowly getting into Osamu Tezuka's manga works thanks to this podcast, a couple of blogs, online retailers that need no free publicity, but man...I can definitely see how hectic that man's schedule -no, his life- must have been in order to have such a vast output. I'm not a Tezuka expert by any means so even if the documentary and the book aren't exhaustive they should still be very informative.

I don't want to think about Carl Macek, not out of "hate" but more out of "been there, done that" so yeah...can't imagine how that would have worked. Even the real LOGH narrator did go more than a bit overboard with blatant foreshadowing of deaths and final meetings, to say nothing of the heavy spoilers in previews. Anything more than that would be sheer madness.

Mr.Surat there is in fact an English dub version of the uncut Violence Jack ova's that was also released on vhs by critical mass. I would be glad to send you a copy.

If you can capture them onto DVD like you did the subbed version, I'll take copies since the R2 DVD ISOs posted on ADC, like the R2 DVD rips available on BakaBT, are Japanese audio only. If you were truly devout, you could take that R2 DVD video (released in the US as the "uncut" version) and sync it up with the English dub audio to create the ultimate edition of Violence Jack (a dual-audio "uncut" version), but getting analog audio sources to match with digital video sources is an ordeal.

I don't download off the site since I listen with my iPod.

This is true for almost everybody, and it's precisely why we're trying this out in the first place. Most podcast listeners just get whatever is on the RSS feed. Since the number one criticism of this show over the years has been that the episodes are too long and too irregularly released, which is intimidating to new listeners, we'd take a look and see how many current listeners really, truly prefer listening to the shows as they have always been such that they'd actually go out of their way to get it as opposed to whatever the feed uploaded.

What may not be entirely clear to the end listener is that the segment reviews aren't all recorded at the same time or even in the order which they're presented. Some are recorded several weeks after others. For instance, during my review I mentioned that the post-apocalyptic movie The Book of Eli was coming out "in a few weeks," whereas during the news segment prior to said review we pointed out that Daisuke Gouri had died, something which wasn't reported on until after that movie had come out.

As such, some segments may be recorded/edited for some time such that we hold off on posting them pending the completion of remaining segments. Part of collecting this data--and it'll take a while yet--is to figure out whether that's actually necessary or not.

So far 100% of the feedback we have received regarding this has been "don't release the show in segments, leave it all in one piece." But feedback received does not correspond to a representative sample. See: organizations that do nothing but get people to write angry letters to TV stations regarding programming content, because TV stations erroneously assume one angry letter corresponds to lots of angry people who didn't write letters.

As such, despite the feedback received I can say that after 24 hours 30% of listeners went and direct downloaded the full show. That's a decent percentage of people, but that also means 70% of listeners thus far are fine with waiting. Still, that's only after a day. We need more data.

Gosh darn it Daryl. You are a poop head that makes my life harder. Getting a full show on my PSP means I have to open up their poopy poop web browser because I don't have a flipping better portable media player.

Also posting from my work (high school) so I can't curse you out like I'd want to.

Looking forward to getting the full show. I got Helen's new book and it is completely awesome. Also Violence Jack is an achievement in the history of mankind. It is a classy show by a classy guy with an equally classy dub.

Hey guys, as far as the subject of show length is concerned; I would say that the length is not the problem. If someone wants to stop listening then just turn the podcast off. Going to the content itself, the tezuka book sounds incredibly interesting. I usually would have never been so enthusiastic to pick this up but your recommendation did wonders. Thanks and keep up the good work.

I'm actually at least partially responsible for one of the earlier releases of Violence Jack uncut. Some Italian chap studying Japanese volunteered to help translate the subs from the uncut Italian DVD as long as I helped distribute it. I graciously agreed, having next to no prior exposure to Violence Jack. Hearing the name, "Go Nagai" was enough. Needless to say, I upon doing quality control, I realized what I had gotten myself into, especially with Evil Town. I ended up just releasing it with relatively serviceable subs. In many ways, I wonder if I am akin to those who have translated "Mein Kampf"; Am I contributing to history, or am I dooming others to relive it by exposing people to such stuff?

Believe it or not, I actually find Angel Cop to be far more offensive than Violence Jack. The reasons for this are numerous and not what most who read this post may be thinking. I won't elaborate here unless someone has a genuine interest in hearing why, as I suppose its not really on topic!

Good to hear you'll be talking about Wings of Honneamise. It's one of my favorite animated films. Would you believe that I'd never seen it before about a year ago? I recently read Todd Ciolek's failed attempt at using this movie as an example to convince people that rape isn't hilarious. Apparently anime says otherwise.

I managed to drag my whole accompanying posse into a showing of it at Anime Expo last year. I'm having a hard time convincing them on any anime made before the 90s so they probably weren't too impressed (well, at least they thought it looked cool...). Speaking of which, it seems like last year was the like "The Year of GAINAX" at Anime Expo or something. I think they were showing almost every theatrical release Gainax ever made including the Gunbuster/Diebuster movies, Honneamise, Gurren Lagann the movie, Evangelion 1.0, etc...

I received it for Christmas myself and am very impressed by the book. I haven't watched the DVD yet but I have gone through the book many times. It is simply beautiful and is serving as a book for my coffee table at the moment. I'm amazed at how important Don Dracula is in many of Tezuka's works especially when the character has had absolutely no exposure in the West. I'd love to see Vertical tackle Don Dracula next (along with a concurrent release of Vampires). Hopefully we'll see these works soon especially since the "manga" release of the millenium, Twilight, will bring an influex of more kiddies looking for more vampire stuff in manga.

A quick question though. I have been searching for the first volume of Adolf for years, and it is completely out of print and super expensive. Can anyone help me find Adolf: A Tale of Two Adolfs for a non-insane price?

Guys, I love your show. I rather you keep the full show on your feed for podcast subscribers such as myself and let the rest download the one hour segments through your blog site. I work ten hour days with a 45 minute commute to and from my work site.Thanks to a bad tractor trailer on the way to work this past Wednesday segment 1 ended ten minutes before i pulled into my job's parking lot. I was bummed.

Seriously I don't know what the big deal is regarding the podcast being "too long" since the majority of mp3 players have resume play built in. Meaning the player remember the spot when it was stopped and plays it back from that specific spot when you select the podcast file. I say the longer the podcast the better cause AWO is one of the more entertaining podcast on my iTunes feed.

Gerald, thank you for your reccomendation. I just downloaded a fansub of this and I hope the fansub produced by To-y RC is more than servicable. I plan on making DVDs of this and giving them out to my friends as I feel old school Anime should be preserved and shared. For those still looking for the fansub, search under it's original title of Bobby ni Kubittake, or Bobby's In Deep. Searching under Bobby's Girl pulls up references to the 1960's song of the same name.

I would like to ask one question. Daryl, what's up with the hating on tattooed girls?

For the most part, American kids aren't interested in sports show because they don't HAVE to live vicariously through them. If they want to watch basketball or baseball or whatever they can just go down to their local gym or whatever and actually do it. Aside from "Friday Night Lights" has there ever actually been a live-action show about high school sports that lasted more than one season? Hell, there aren't even many movies, aside from the "Bad News Bears" films and that's going back decades.

I never bought the "fat and lazy" argument. Unless you want to make the case that American kids back in the '50s-90s were also "fat and lazy," it doesn't hold water. We just aren't all that interested in sports fiction in general (especially kids and teens) unless it's about someone already famous, or a reason to give Kevin Costner something to do...

We don't need to watch a fictional show about football or baseball. There's enough of the real stuff going on and all we have to do is flip a television switch to see it. Hell, all the major sports have cable networks now, so kids can even watch hockey 24/7 if that's what they're into.

RWG (we don't have to see some animated Japanese kids doing it...badly)

Watched Bobby's in Deep, not to spoil the end or anything, but man, they do a really good job of making you feel like you're experiencing that... Or at least it did for me...But that could also be that I was in a similar situation, and watching that brought back that feeling I had.

RWG: "If they want to watch basketball or baseball or whatever they can just go down to their local gym or whatever and actually do it. "

Actually, it's the opposite problem. They don't want to do it, which is why they don't care about sports-based entertainment. Again, have you not been keeping up with how they're giving themselves diabetes with all the sugar they shove into their systems? Hell, there was this famous ex-con photographer who bought it a while back via heart attack. I feel sorry for the guy, but he was treading into John Candy territory with his waistline. [I think ANN reported it at the time.] The only ironic thing is that a (former) fat adult like Chris Beveridge was one of the few fans promoting sports anime.

That's why I applaud Viz for being bold enough to basically say, "Get off your fat asses and get some exercise, you lazy American otaku fucks!" on the back of every Slam Dunk. Obviously not in those words, but they're not flinching from the subject, either.

"Unless you want to make the case that American kids back in the '50s-90s were also "fat and lazy," it doesn't hold water."

Most American kids in the 50s-90s did not get so fat that insurance companies now have a new excuse of screwing the rest of us with higher fees.

"We just aren't all that interested in sports fiction in general (especially kids and teens) unless it's about someone already famous, or a reason to give Kevin Costner something to do..."

Bullshit. There was no one famous in Balls of Fury and that fucker probably made more money than all the R1 DVDs for Prince of Tennis combined. Kids are just so fucking spoiled nowadays that they believe they can look like Dan Fogler and win first place just for participating. That's why they watch garbage like Hannah Montana and HSM instead. Because they think all it takes to be a success is by being a self-centered dip-shit, not by busting your ass to get ahead, which is the real appeal of sports anime.

I'm 2/3 in the way of Violence Jack. EviL Town is the most hilariously entertaining thing I've watched in a while. I think what did it the most was the part with the gang leader eating the tranny, then gaining demonic super powers for no damn reason.

You know how Tezuka's been getting noticed in west with his stuff being released and books about him. That's what I wish they'd do for Go Nagai.

"Bullshit. There was no one famous in Balls of Fury and that fucker probably made more money than all the R1 DVDs for Prince of Tennis combined."

And that's supposed to mean what, exactly? That movie grossed $32 mil, which is half of what "Field of Dreams" made two freakin' DECADES ago. Or about as much as your generic slasher film.

We here in the US just don't take to sports fiction in general and really never have. Why should our anime fans be any different? Look, obviously you have...issues...with kids today. Fine. So do I. But just because a part of the Japanese population goes gaga over sports manga and anime doesn't reflect much on us at all.

That's pretty much true of all sports related films so far as it goes. There's usually another draw, whether it be the cast or comedy aspects or whatever. It gets a bit murkier when you're talking series. "Friday Night Lights" gets all sorts of critical acclaim, but not the ratings. I can't recall any other American TV show that was focused on high school sports that lasted more than a season, but I'm no expert.

So far as anime fans go, I doubt it's a whole lot different now than it was in '85. I could count the "Touch" fans I knew on the fingers of one hand and they were more Adachi fans than baseball people. Can't speak for any Tsubasa fans - I think in the one or two C/FO surveys we took we got maybe one or two people in the entire club that would actually admit to watching the show :-)

RWG (the sports stuff just has NEVER been popular over here so far as I know)

RWG: "We here in the US just don't take to sports fiction in general and really never have."

The Friday Night Lights spin-off is still going strong.

VZ: Someone who shall remain nameless says Nagai's not too pleased with how the Devil Man and Cutey Honey manga were handled, and is only willing to let the rest of his stuff get published if Dante comes out first.

I certainly don't expect sports anime to be popular in the United States, at least not anytime soon, but just for the record it's worth pointing out that Touch had more and better character development than Captain Tsubasa. As slow and tiresome as some episodes of Touch might seem, I would say it was all worth my time because of the end result.

Not so much with Tsubasa, which was one of my first anime but also one I've essentially outgrown by now. Outside of establishing the characters and their obvious rivals, giving them some tragic / sympathetic background to play with, the emphasis was more on the endless soccer matches and the random super moves involved. It's not terrible, but definitely a lot more repetitive and closer to the standard shounen fighting formula (filler included). I guess that explains why it's popular elsewhere around the world though, at least to some extent, because slow characterization isn't really that attractive or interesting when kids would rather see guys fight (literally or otherwise, if you consider that a surprising number of characters suffered physical punishment in Captain Tsubasa).

YOU BASTARDS! 85a show up on my feed just for Daryl to tell me "Full show direct download ONLY." So what do hear when I got it? Uighur, Heihachi, and Bass all die, I have to learn how Funsub work in onder to watch Bobby girl, and I need money in order to have The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga. You might as well subtitles it "Let Make *************** Day Bad". Which got worst when I looking at the comments and people are saying then finding and watching uncut Violence Jack anime. Come on people, Daryl just tell you how it bad. I can understand fallen asleep on Odin, having Daryl trick you to watch MD Geist thinking it not gonna be that bad if know what happen (it doesn't work). But hearing rape, killing, and bad, bad thing just for the hell for it is good reason to watch a badly made cartoon. Just go spent your time seeing The Book of Eli (which was GREAT) or any Mad Max Fist of the North Star copy cats out. Although, Violence Jack magna sound pretty cool.

@ one of the Anonymous, RWG, & NJ: I think they facts here that of both side miss. Kids are not fat and lazy by birth, they only as active as they surround are. If a kid doesn't play sports by either parents or friend/family, it not gonna be easy for them to get in to it as teens. Which bring me to my next point. Field of dreams, Bad news bear and etc was very popular because parents take they kids to see they movies. When the last time a kid movie about sports came out. Last one I know about was Air Bud (which suck) and Everybody's Hero. Big windup! may not be for american anime fan and sport fan don't like the character to be main point of the show, but if the show was on some kid programs block it might work, because kids are gonna to watch anything you put in front of them.

nj: Haven't seen Tsubasa, and the only reason I remotely want to is because Stephen Chow gave props to it, but if you still wanna give the soccer genre a chance, you can always buy Whistle! from Viz. I got bored with it when they wouldn't let the girl play on the boys team, but it's a decent take on the sports theme in general.

Whenever I think of MD Geist, the first thing that comes to mind is "Supermundane fighting ability!" Seriously. That was always good for a laugh. It was one of those rare vids you knew was lousy without understanding a word of it.

"I'm 2/3 in the way of Violence Jack. EviL Town is the most hilariously entertaining thing I've watched in a while. I think what did it the most was the part with the gang leader eating the tranny, then gaining demonic super powers for no damn reason."

Jack vs Mad Sirus was a pretty awesome fight. The dub of that scene is worth watching if only for the part where Mad Sirus breaks out the Karate. Hilarious.

Great show, I listened the whole thing as usually and will probably listen it more one or two times (I have a habit of listening podcasts when working at home).Also downloaded the uncut version of Violence Jack (I think it's the version that Dane Scaysbrook mentioned about) but haven't had the time to see it yet.